Daniel in Atenas, Costa Rica

The first time my friend, Ethan, mentioned Corcovado to me he ran through the highlights: bull sharks that come into the river as the tide rips up its banks, all four species of monkeys found in CR, untouched primary forest, miles upon miles of hiking trails, and, the most enticing tagline I’d ever heard, “the most biologically intense place on Earth.” My first response was ‘hell yes’ and slowly, over the next month and a half, we began to put together our trip for semana santa (holy week) 2011. We had a lot of challenges to overcome: the fact that we only had six days, the difficulty of getting to this remote destination, the cost of the trip, our limited and questionable gear (tents borrowed from the center), the decision not to hire a guide, the concern we were idiots for doing so, and, ultimately, the question of whether we would even be in good enough shape to complete the hikes. People do die in Corcovado, usually about one every season. Most deaths have nothing to do with the dangerous wildlife; besides sharks there are poisonous snakes, crocodiles, peccaries, jaguars, pumas, and tapirs, all of which could and have killed people in other situations. Most people who die in Corcovado lose the trail in the dense forest or wander off it a few paces in pursuit of an animal and, when they try to find the trail again, find themselves hopelessly lost.

We also knew that we didn’t have the gear we’d want for such a trip. No backpacking stove or water filtration system was readily available, the tents the center has are meant more for backyard campouts, and one of our friends, Caity, borrowed both hiking boots and a pack for the trip.

The promise of being in such a remote and, I’ll admit, I totally bought into this: ‘biologically intense’ place outweighed the challenges and we went ahead with our planning. Things began to fall into place. We spoke with our Professor, Achim, who has visited the park several times. He gave us some useful pointers including telling us to cut out one extremely difficult and unrewarding hike from our itinerary that stretched some 27 kilometers (16 miles) along a hot beach, unsheltered from the sun. Our Lonely Planet guide, usually indispensable, had some maps but didn’t even have a correct number for reservations for the park. We were lucky to be able to confirm our reservations in time. Semana Santa is the busiest vacation week in much of Central and South America but emailing far ahead of time and jumping through all of the bureaucratic hoops set up for us finally allowed us to confirm our reservation and make our payment (the park charges a $10 per person/day flat rate plus $4 per person/night for camping; total $260 for the five of us). We also made a crucial decision about transport. We decided that taking the nine-hour bus both ways would be too much torture but we didn’t want to lay out too many hundreds of dollars on round-trip flights. Finally, Achim suggested that we take a bus down (San Jose-La Palma; $14/person) and fly back (Carate-Alajuela/San Jose Intl.; $184/person).

Having no stove, our food options were limited. We ended up with 7 boxes of various granola bars, about 70 tortillas, refried bean paste, cookies, crackers, peanut butter, jelly, granola, almonds, pistachios, cereal, snack packs, salami, and cheese.

Five days ago today Caity, Ethan, and I set out from Atenas to meet with Ethan’s cousin, Allison, and her boyfriend who came down from Minnesota to join us. Then, at 7 am the five of us began our adventure hoping to see everything that has made this country a world-famous destination for ecotourism.

Day 1

5:30 from the field station to Atenas, bus to San Jose.
7:00 meet up with Ethan’s cousin and Ethan’s cousin’s boyfriend
7:45 make it to the obscure station for the only crazy bus company that will drive all the way from San Jose to the Osa Peninsula, where Corcovado is located. We realized that the bus was entirely sold out and after basically begging the driver to let us stand in the aisle, we gave up, bought tickets for the same bus at noon, and went to get breakfast. We hung out around central San Jose for a while, walked to the Mercado Central, got accosted by a Nicaraguan named Felix who offered to help us find our way, then asked for money, then hugged me repeatedly when I begrudgingly handed him a thousand Colones. We sat on the steps of a monument and talked and people-watched while Allison and her boyfriend got their first taste of Costa Rican sun. Both were absolutely pink by the time we made our way back to the bus station around 11. While waiting for the bus, I started talking with one of the workers about where we were going, where we were staying, etc. At that point, we didn’t have a place to sleep (we were planning to camp in a lot somewhere in La Palma), and, more crucially, we didn’t yet have a 4-wheel drive taxi for the next morning. There’s no proper road from La Palma to Los Patos; most of the route follows a riverbed which is only passable during the dry season. The bus worker, Alexandro, told me he ‘knew a guy with a pickup,’ made a call, and when we arrived in La Palma, our taxi driver, Christian, was waiting for us. It was about 8:30, dark, and had been raining for hours and Chrsitian gently persuaded us that camping on a beach 2 km away from the bus stop was a less good idea than staying in the cabinas right around the corner. After some shaky negotiation in Spanish, we got two rooms, arranged to meet up with our driver in the morning, and passed out. Caity and Ethan shared the double bed and I slept on my sleeping pad in a room that must have had a healthy population of chinches (the bug that carries chagas). However, after a nine-hour bus ride over paved roads which had partially crumbled and fallen away into the river-valley below and unpaved roads which we thought we would slide off of at any moment, we were happy not to be moving any more.

Day 2

6:00 am picked up by Christian in his pick-up truck. We threw our packs in the back and three of us sat in the bed on a board lain across the sides of the truck, backs against the back of the cab. The 17 km ride took about an hour as we crisscrossed back and forth across the river bed. We saw toucans and scarlet macaws on our ride and got jostled around.

7:00 we arrived at Los Patos ranger station, the first point inside of Parque Nacional Corcovado. We turned over our reservation documents, signed in, and a barefoot, sleepy-looking ranger pointed us towards the trail. We stopped quickly to eat a couple of granola bars and re-divide our food between all five of us then started hiking around 7:15. Less than 100 yards down the trail we had to balance on logs to cross two streams. Then, almost immediately, we started to climb the slippery trail over root-steps and typical red-clay tropical mud. Allison and her boyfriend, still jet-lagged after having barely slept on their flight and then arriving at 5 am, and never having backpacked before in their lives, took to the challenge doggedly but it was clear they were a big shell-shocked by what was before us. None of us knew quite what to expect of the trails and even Ethan and I, who had done the most reading about them, had never backpacked in a tropical forest before and we knew it wouldn’t be easy. Though the trail leveled out (and even descended) after the first hour or so, the forest quickly closed in around us and, as the day went on, it became much more hot and humid. The air was thick enough in some places that you could see the moisture hanging in it and at some point, it was hard to tell what on our bodies was sweat and what had condensed there from the forest. It was also some of the most impressive forest we’d ever seen. The first part of the hike was mainly through secondary forest but even that had some huge trees. Because the growth patterns are so different, in the tropics, it’s much harder than in a temperate forest to tell the age of a tree by its size. A tree so large that three people can’t put their arms around it could be just 50 years old, or 150. We saw three species of monkey before 10 am, we saw army ants and the ant shrikes (ant birds) which follow in their wake, eating the bugs they scatter, and we saw trees that ten people couldn’t put their arms around.

We made frequent stops and by noon, we were all ready for a lunch-break. We had gone through much of our water and treated some from a stream with iodine tablets to make it potable. After an hour break, we continued to walk. About 45 minutes later, still exhausted, we stopped again for a snack break. At this point, everyone was feeling exhausted and we thought we had at least two more hours of walking before we reached our destination, Sirena field station. When we got up from our break, we crossed a stream, turned a corner, and the station was in sight. A wave of relief passed over the group as we dragged ourselves across the open lawn surrounding the buildings and to the cement stairs leading to the porch. We must have looked half-dead as we approached, covered in mud to our knees, no dry clothes anywhere on our bodies, and faces wearied but happy to have accomplished our first big hike with heaviest packs through tropical forest.

That night we managed the 300 yard walk down to the beach to watch the sunset but not much more. As we walked back to the station along the grassy airstrip that stretches between it and the Pacific ocean, a large tapir crossed into the tall grass 50 yards ahead of us and disappeared. Upon returning to the station, we fell asleep soon after dark. Unfortunately, all of the covered tent shelters at the station were taken and we spent a damp night in our leaky tent. Despite that, I was able to sleep most of the night, floating on my sleeping pad above the lake which formed in the bottom of our tent.

Day 3

The next morning we woke up to the calls of hundreds of birds in the trees and the air over our heads. The Sirena field station in Corcovado was built on a green lawn neatly carved out of the surrounding rainforest making it an excellent place to be able to see wildlife as they cross the clearing. In the first morning I saw more scarlet macaws than I’d seen in the rest of my time in Costa Rica. The colorful pairs of macaws flew in every direction over the field and sat high in the trees, passing fruits and nuts from beak to beak.

As the morning passed, people began to clear out of the tent shelters and we were able to move our gear under them and hang our wet clothes on lines in the sun. We also hiked during the day, but nothing more than 5 km, we were still tired and sore from the day before. A network of trails branch out from the Sirena station since this is the locus of the park for seeing wildlife. Many visitors only see the section immediately surrounding the station, arriving by air or boat.

Day 4

Our second day at Sirena we decided to visit a swimming hole on the Rio Claro. We hiked towards it and arrived a little before noon. The water was clear, cool, and refreshing. In places it bubbled quickly over shallow rocks and in others, the river narrowed and deepened to over ten feet. We built a small fire on the shore and watched as massive king fishers flew up and down over the river, dodging between branches and leaves with ease and making their cackling call to one another. Ethan spent some time fashioning a net out of his t-shirt and sticks and fishing unsuccessfully in the river.

After a couple of hours we decided to return via the other half of the trail that looped out towards the river from the station. Our simple map didn’t show elevation and we ended up taking a mountain route which ascended high into the park, giving us a view of the coast before returning back and coming out at the back of Sirena.

Soon after returning to the station we set out again towards the Rio Sirena where we hoped to see sharks and crocodiles feeding at the mouth of the river. High tide was sometime around 6 and we left the station around 3:45. As the tide moves up the beach and river banks become virtually impassable as the surf pushes up the sand towards, and eventually reaching, the edge of the forest. As soon as we turned off the beach to walk along the river bank a tico couple told us that there was a tapir right around the corner laying in the sand. We found the massive animal stretched out in the shade of a cashew tree trying to stay cool. As we watched he stood, turned, yawned, and lay back down again. The tapir is the largest land animal in Costa Rica and used to being at the top of the food chain; our presence didn’t seem to bother him at all. Later, he swam in the river and munched on some leaves which he tore from a nearby tree, all while ignoring his human onlookers.

We did see a small caymen on the beach as well as a larger crocodile floating lazily in the river, rising and falling with the water as the waves swept through from the sea. Unfortunately, we missed the bull sharks which we were told come in from the ocean every high tide to feed in the river. Just before the water reached its highest point, we walked back along the beach and sat at the end of the airstrip watching the sun go down over the ocean.

Day 5

We woke up around 7:00, ate breakfast, packed up tents and packs, and were on the trail by 8:15. The rangers had told us we had to leave by 8:30 in order to make sure the tide was low enough to be able to cross the rivers and navigate the trail along the beach. In fact, there was one point on the trail where we had to take off our shoes to climb around a massive rock formation that jutted out into the water. The entire hike was beautiful. After we forded the Rio Claro, the trail sometimes followed the beach and sometimes snaked into the woods or followed right behind the first row of palm trees between the woods and the beach. The ocean was pure wilderness with massive waves crashing on the beach and a rocky shoreline. Though different, this hike was just as challenging as the first day. It was slightly shorter, a little under 20 km but most of it was on sand, making it hard to feel as though we were making any progress at all. On the unprotected beach the sun beat down on our heads as we walked along the slanted surface, feeling off balance with our still-heavy packs. Of course, the view was worth every second. At the very beginning of the hike we saw a pack of peccaries and we continued to see amazing wildlife: a four-foot long eel near the shore, a green and black poison dart frog, scarlet macaws, and so many other kinds of birds that we couldn’t identify. Once again we overestimated the length of the hike and when we thought that we still had two hours left we met up with a family that told us we had a half hour until the La Leona ranger station, the last station in the park. When we told them we were just looking forward to our first cold beers in five days he pulled a few out of his pack and passed them around. Our spirits significantly lifted, we continued on the final half hour or so to the station, signed out of Parque Nacional Corcovado, and all went for a well-deserved swim in the ocean. The current was strong but it was totally swimmable and we were so happy, feeling completely satisfied with our trip.

It was another forty minute walk along the beach to Carate, the tiny town which we were set to fly out of. The center of town is soda (small restaurant) owned by a Canadian expat from Vancouver. We ordered drinks and dinner and found out that we would be able to camp on the land that he owned. He has a 400 acre wildlife refuge which is mostly made up of virgin rainforest and doesn’t have any trails through it at all. Close to the beach he planted about 60 almond trees about twenty years ago and the nuts attract huge flocks of scarlet macaws to his property. The rest of the night was taken up with re-setting up camp and then making a huge bonfire on the beach and just relaxing.

Day 6

At breakfast (at the same soda) the next day, our pilot came and found us asking what hotel we were staying in because he hadn’t been able to find us anywhere. He then explained that there was going to be a big storm in the afternoon and that we would be better off taking an earlier flight from Carate. He offered to make a ‘tour flight’ out of it, to take us up the coast and show us the parts of Corcovado that we hadn’t seen. We were scheduled for 3:30 originally but we shifted our schedule to leave at 11:00. We spent the next hour on the beach, chatting with some local fisherman one of whom was more than willing to tell us all about the fish he catches from the beach and about a massive manta ray he had caught a couple of days ago. He drew a picture for us in the sand with a stick with a diameter about 6 feet across. We talked fishing with him for a while longer before going for a swim then packing up and walking the fifty meters to the airfield. Our pilot was waiting for us with cold cokes and bags of some Costa Rican cheeto-esque snack. We piled in with packs on our laps for the forty minute ride to Alajuela airport and taxied down the runway for takeoff. He took us all the way down the coast at a low elevation so we could see where we had been and also see the Corcovado lagoon and the Isla de Cano, an hour’s boat ride from the shore but also a park of the National Park. We could see the change in water color where the continental shelf was. Soon we touched down in Alajuela, went through ‘security’ (a small shack with one police man who asked for our passports and kind of searched our bags), grabbed a cab, and headed back towards Atenas.

A separate post with photos soon to come! Comments Welcome!

Tomorrow morning two friends and I are taking an early bus to San Jose to an early bus to one of the southern-most parts of Costa Rica. Once we reach the Osa Peninsula we're going to the park National Geographic called 'the most biologically intense place on earth.' I'm going there because, among other things, I want to see cool animals. Living in the park are all four species of monkey present in costa rica (spider, white-faced capuchin, howler, and squirrel), the infamous and poisonous fer de lance snake, tapirs, jaguar, tons of birds including the harpy eagle, the largest bird of prey in the Americas, bull sharks in the rivers, 30 ft. crocodiles, the list goes on. The park also conserves a large old-growth tropical rainforest which I’m just as excited to see as the fauna. I look forward to updating everyone on what I actually see while I’m down there but more on that once I return…

The past few weeks have been exhausting and so good. After we returned from Panama, we had two free weekends in a row and a lot of data collection in the field.

I spent both of my weekends on the Caribbean coast in a rasta town of 600 called Cahuita. It’s incredible to me that this part of the country hasn’t been developed as much as the Pacific. Some people here have suggested that there’s a kind of cultural barrier in Costa Rica between the Caribbean and the Central Valley. Historically, the majority of the slave trade affected the Caribbean and for a long time, the afro-Caribbean population was restricted from traveling into the central part of the country. The division remains and though the Caribbean is even more beautiful than the Pacific, it’s relatively under-developed. I like it that way.

In time, the development will come to this part of the country and I’m sure it will come to look like much of the Pacific coast. One town down the coast, Manzanilla, only got paved roads in 2003.

Cahuita represents the common Costa Rican phrase pura vida in all ways. The people are very laid back, the beaches are beautiful, and the food and drink are delicious. Even the national park here has entrance by donation, the only park in the country where such a system exists.

Our weekends were spent with bonfires, swimming in the waves, and lots and lots of beach time. We camped at a placed called the Reggae Restaurant and chilled with the people who own the restaurant. True to its name, there was always reggae (much of it Costa Rican) coming from two massive speakers in the open-air restaurant.

After our two weekends away we had a full week of directed research data collection in the field. For my group, that meant setting up sample plots, measuring trees and coffee plants, taking soil and leaf litter samples, gps-mapping farms, eating rice, beans, plantains, cheese, eggs, and tortillas out of banana leaves, and a lot of hard, hot hours scaling steep coffee farms. We did our research on three separate coffee farms of three different types in the Atenas area. The first farm has been managed organically for almost ten years, the second was conventional, “shade-grown” (though for this farm that just meant there were a couple of trees on the property, no real shade at all), and the third was an abandoned farm which the owner had been cleaning up for the preceding three years. That last farm was absolutely my favorite: it was wild and overgrown and the hills were so steep that you couldn’t climb them without swinging on coffee plants to pull yourself up or lower yourself down the slope. We all helped out with each other’s work but my job was to take soil samples. I took 60 25 cm samples over the course of the week using two different corers (one of which I eventually shattered) and a big metal sledge hammer. Everyday was hard but it was great; I could have done with a couple more weeks of collecting data. Unfortunately, it’s over now and we have to analyze our data and, after break, write our research papers.

For now, I’m focused on the Corcovado adventure. There will be a big picture post once I get back from there!

Comments welcome as always! It’s crazy to think that I’ll be back in the states in 16 days; what a trip.